The Subtleties of Sulking

Parimelazhagar breaks the couplet into three pieces and takes the vocative first. 'பரத்த = பரத்தமையுடையாய்' is his sentence: before anything else he settles that she is turning to the man and calling him one whose ways do not stay in one place. Only then does he come to the first line, which he reads as 'every one who has the nature of a woman consumes you in common with their own eyes.' He adds two words here. நின்னை, you, is not in the source; he supplies it so that the thing consumed is unmistakably the man. யாவரும், all of them, presses again on a word the couplet has already used. Finally he reaches the second line: 'therefore I do not come near your chest, which is their leavings.' The அதனால், therefore, is also his — the couplet sets two sentences side by side and it is the commentator who joins them as cause and consequence. But the sharpest thing in the whole reading is one word, மிச்சில், leavings, what is left over. The couplet contains only பொது, held in common. That what remains after a thing has been consumed in common is leavings is the inference Parimelazhagar draws, and it is worth recording plainly that the word is his and not the verse's.